Augustus and Hazel's Absolutely Okay Afterlife
by Hope Now
Summary: "I squint to see the marquee, reading the names of the newly dead without much interest. And then. There they are. Those three names I've been waiting what feels like forever for. She's finally here." Gus and Hazel find each other once again in life after death. With the past closer than they thought, is everafter actually all that happy? Told in alternate POVs.
1. One

_**Disclaimer: **The Fault in Our Stars and its characters belong to John Green.  
_

* * *

_It never feels decay but gathers life  
__From the pure sunlight and the supreme air.  
__**Athanasia**_** by Oscar Wilde**

**One  
****Augustus**

A lover of metaphor like myself would be quite thrilled to find that heaven is a town where diners serve the best slice of blueberry pie you never had when you were still alive; bookstores always have copies of whatever it is you are looking for (even those rare out-of-print titles, and yes, even the complete _Price of Dawn_ book series and _An Imperial Affliction_); movie theaters somehow screen films the way you want them to end and show life on earth live, as well as your favorite memories, like as they happened they were being caught on camera all along; and a pack of (unlit, still, of course) cigarettes lasts forever.

Except it is not a metaphor. Heaven is really like that. For me it is, anyway. It's not different for everybody, because the town I'm in (which I like to call Mayhemville, not to be ironic, but simply to honor Max Mayhem) is also eternally home to a handful of other souls. However, it's not entirely the same for everyone, either, because said town only has a population of 361. Can you travel to other people's heavens? I don't know, to be honest. I've never really tried to. Besides, I have only been here for less than two months, and it's like learning to live all over again. I am still getting my footing.

Anyway. I think my house was a preparation for heaven in disguise, 'cause one thing they don't tell you about the afterlife?

Encouragements.

They.

Are.

Everywhere.

They go as far as to put them behind the counter at No Sham, right under the shelf lined with bottles of Guinness. No Sham is a bar owned by Mr. O'Brady, an Irish hockey fanatic who was a sheepshearer in his past life. _Happy Hour is the Best Hour_, it proclaims in bright green cross-stitch. Pictured underneath is a foamy 8-bit-esque mug of beer, cross-stitched as well. The presence of bars and drinking in heaven loses its novelty once the other (much better) facts are revealed, much to my relief.

It's like I never even left home in Indianapolis. Re the encouragements, I mean, not the alcohol.

But of course I did, and I'm not about to forget it. Another thing they don't tell you about the afterlife is, the loved ones you left behind would not be the only ones in mourning when you're gone. The way I see it, _I'm _not gone—_they_ are. They lost one damn person. I lost everyone.

I lost _her_, so I think it's apropos I get to be mopey, too.

I'm well aware that it's not really fair of me to think this way. Sometimes, I just can't help it. Other times, I just don't care.

She makes me wonder if Anna from _An Imperial Affliction_ got to have a heaven like this, only it's Californian, or maybe she's in a field of tulips, or maybe she's still tending to her cholera research foundation from beyond the grave.

Or maybe she doesn't get a heaven at all, and her whole life will remain ending right in the middle of a

But I don't like dwelling on that thought, even if it haunts me enough. Hazel makes me think of AIA makes me think of Hazel. And that's just one of the vicious cycles I underwent and keep undergoing minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day.

Today I sit at my front porch, feet propped up on a milk crate full of books and comics. Some days I have both legs and some days I don't, although I feel the same either way. When I first arrived here I didn't have my other leg, but when I woke up the next day it was there. I was so happy I did jumping jacks right on my bed—we get houses fully furnished to our liking as soon as we get here; I chose not to question it—and went to tell Hazel Grace.

Obviously, I couldn't get the message to her.

When my leg was once again prosthetic the day after that, I wasn't exactly celebrating, but then it appeared again three days later and I got the gist. Now, both limbs are present, and I chose to enjoy it by sitting and flipping through the fifth issue of _Watchmen_, if only because treating it normally feels so good I can hardly believe it.

I'm reading the last panel when Denny walks up the porch steps and kicks softly at the milk crate. I finish reading _Fearful Symmetry _before I look up at him. "Daniel," I acknowledge, and hand him a random book from the stack closest to me.

He looks down at it. "_The Hobbit_?" He shrugs and puts it in his back pocket, which I take to mean he will, at the very least, give it a try. "Hey, Gus," he says to me, leaning on one of the posts.

Denny is one of the few people I knew from my old life that I found again in Mayhemville. We met in Memorial a few months after I was first diagnosed with osteosarcoma. He was a year older than me, and he had Kaposi's sarcoma. He introduced me to _The Price of Dawn_. Two weeks later, he died.

Post-personhood, he is neither older than me nor affected by cancer. In fact, I barely recognized him without the telltale dark spots all over his skin, and with more meat on his bones and a full head of hair. "Daniel Garber," he'd said on my first day in the afterlife as he took my hand and shook it. "I lost consciousness and hit my head on your bedpost at Memorial." His voice was full and strong, like he was a politician making empty promises about abolishing poverty instead of narrating what was possibly a traumatizing experience for the both of us.

I'd known what he was talking about the moment he said it. That had been the first time ever I laid eyes on him. I just couldn't respond; everything was still a doozy to me.

He took this to mean that I hadn't recognized him. "You rushed to my side?" he added, sounding less sure of himself this time. "You helped Nurse Collins lift me up and get some smelling salts for me?"

I nodded. "I remember you. When you woke up you called me Phil because—"

"You looked like a really young version of that pretty guy from _The Hangover_, yeah."

"Not anymore?" I wondered aloud, amused.

But he only shrugged and put an arm around me, already leading me somewhere. "Let me show you around, Augustus Waters."

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" I ask now, since if I didn't, I'd have to wait for Denny to reignite the conversation, and hell could freeze over and he still won't speak. Actually, scratch that. I heard from the gossip circle of older women at the diner a couple days ago that hell actually _has _frozen over and they've found a new activity for torture: Being dragged across the ice by cuddly wuddly polar bears. Naked. And everyone you ever dated and went to high school with will have dreams of it happening to you.

Denny looks to the left, then to the right, before he directs his gaze back to me. He swallows. "Do you think Marcy will go out with me?"

"Denny, Marcy is a perpetually fifteen-year-old girl who died at a 1957 Spelling Bee due to asthma before she could kiss somebody during a basement game of Seven Minutes Behind the Washing Machine, or whatever it is they did those days. I'm pretty sure she wants to bone you." _Also,_ I think, but I don't add, _I wouldn't mind at all if she stopped trying to play that kissing game with _me_ all the time. _

"'Bone' me." He rolls his eyes, hands raised at his sides forming peace signs with the fingers bent, which I guess is an attempt to make quotation marks. "You would never say that."

"Right you are. This is Mayhemville. Maybe instead of saying 'boning' we're supposed to be saying 'fleshing.'" I pause. "Yeah," and I adopt a skater accent that I remember from sitting through the _Bill and Ted_ movies and _Dude, Where's My Car?_ with Isaac, "she_ totally_ wants to flesh you, dude."

"Stop, that's not even funny."

"My man," I tell him, once again adopting my normal manner of talking, "just go for it. This place isn't exactly crawling with teenage boys, is it?" There were less than twenty of us, in fact. "And you have nothing to lose, is that right?"

"Yes, but…"

"No buts. There are only ands in_ this_ life, Daniel Garber. No ifs and whens and—"

"I get it," he says abruptly, but he is smiling. "Damn it when you get all philosophical on me, Waters."

"Take her to the park, introduce her to Nintendo, go dance the Hand Jive with her, I don't care, just do it," I tell him, "but not now. Sit, please." I gesture to an empty stool at the far end of the porch.

He does as told and drags it closer to where I am. "Don't mind if I do." He balances the copy of _The Hobbit _on his lap and plants himself on the stool. When he does, he looks me up and down and nods, as if having just made an important decision. He asks me, "Remember when I said you look like a young Bradley Cooper?"

"Of course." He was the only one who did.

"You still kind of do, you know. But not entirely. Just sort of."

I give him a grin that Hazel Grace would call one of my real smiles. She would not be mistaken. Then I lift a dusty game out of the milk crate. "Chess?"

* * *

The opening bars of a Stravinsky composition begin to bleat out of the speakers at the movie theater. I leave Denny right as I'm two moves away from a sixth consecutive win and run to it, as I do every time the song is played, so I can see who the new arrivals are. I can imagine him scratching his head, wondering what's wrong with me, as the chess pieces hang suspended in the air for the shortest of seconds before falling to the ground as a result of my haste.

Every time, I rush due to a mixture of curiosity, hope, and longing, which results in either surprise or a hint of joy, but mostly disappointment. The names—two to six of them at a time—are always listed on the marquee as those they belong to burst, disoriented and confused, but glad nonetheless, out of the double doors to cinema two like honorable guests at a parade. I can say that I'm waiting for someone—_anyone_—I know to get here. A celebrity, even, perhaps. But the truth is, she's the only one in mind each time.

And each time, I am both relieved and saddened that she has never walked through those doors. Somehow, I just know that when she passes, the ultimate destination would be Mayhemville.

It has to be.

A big crowd has gathered at the Cineplex before I could get there, and I can't see the names of the newbies. There's a collective statement of "Welcome!" and "Hello!" from the citizens, and even some ooooh-ing and ahhhh-ing from a few folks.

"Please, give her some space!" I hear the bowling alley attendant, Damien, say, followed by a string of everyone else's opinions, observations, and billions of questions.

"Ooh, she's pretty."

"Would you look at those eyes!"

"That dress makes her look like she walked out of a Barbie ad."

"No, it's definitely _Teen Vogue _material."

"What's _Teen Vogue_? Is that a radio program?"

"No, Marcy, it's not."

"Do you think she was a ballerina?"

"She seems nice enough."

There's only one arrival this afternoon. And she's, well, a she.

Finally the crowd parts, and I square my shoulders. Hazel Grace Lancaster or not, this soul needs a reassuring smile and a friendly face.

Unfortunately, I can give neither of these things to her, because I've been caught too far off-guard.

I disagree with whoever said that her dress makes her look like she stepped out of a Barbie commercial, because that's not the case at all. I really liked it on her once; it feels like a long time ago, but I know it hasn't been that long. She lights up when she sees me, like—_I can't help but think it_—like she's undergoing a PET scan. Her smile at me is tentative, but it's knowing and affectionate all the same.

"Hi, Gus."

I can't seem to find words. Me. Augustus Waters. Wordless.

I feel like I need to get up off the ground although only my feet are touching it. I have so many questions. Some are being answered right now, but they're being flooded out by more and more new ones. Forget surprise, or joy, or relief, or disappointment. I don't know how I feel, and I don't know how I _should _feel.

I've imagined a certain moment in my head so many times. And I've tried to prepare myself the best way I can. I thought I had it all planned out, every possible scenario thrown at me. I'd been afraid, _so _afraid, of the possibility of her not even recognizing me, or worse, me not recognizing her. I've heard of such events taking place, and it seems that everyone thinks something like that could make heaven less of a haven than it is. I can't help but agree. But I was ready for even that.

Yet no matter how many times I've worked out the likely outcomes of that moment, the one where she is at my side again, and to never let her go is actually conceivable, I'm simply at a loss when it comes to _this _moment.

Because this moment is not that moment.

Caroline Mathers, the ill-fated love of my pre-Hazel Grace life, stands before me, and she is stunning. Not to mention her brain is in prime condition and isn't turning her into a rude bitch when I least expect it. This Caroline and the word_ Stumpy_ don't belong in the same sentence, let alone the same lifetime. Especially not the same universe.

For her sake, I hope she doesn't remember the last few months of her life.

"Well?" she prompts. "Is that really all I get?"

I gaze at her a bit longer. Okay, if I'm being truthful, _gape_ is more like it.

Finally, I manage a weak, "It's good to see you, Caroline."

The rest of it, she'll get later.


	2. Two

**A/N: **Thanks to everyone for such kind reviews! I'm glad you guys think I was able to capture the voice of Augustus; that's really important to me. I quite enjoyed the writing process for this chapter. Here's hoping you enjoy the reading process, too!

* * *

**Two **  
**Hazel**

One of my earliest memories is of my parents teaching me to write.

I was two years old and it was before I went to school. The three of us sat huddled at my little Playskool table with crayons and paper. Tiny me, wearing a sundress with sketched planets all over it and my hair down to my back with sparkly flower barrettes I had clumsily put on myself, was clutching a sky blue Crayola and attempting an O. Right, right. They were showing me the methods of procuring the letters E and O by my own creation that day.

"Circle," Tiny Hazel announced, an air of authority in her baby voice, chubby fingers presenting a shaky O. The most zigzaggy and crooked fifteenth letter of the English alphabet, if there ever was one.

"No, honey," my dad said, gently taking my hand in his and guiding me through another, better one. "That's the letter O. Say it with me. _Ohhhh_."

My mouth looked like a baby bird's, lips stretched as far as they could go over my teeth while I mimicked my father's sounds. "_Ohhhhhhh_." I laughed. "That sounds funny, Daddy, like you're surprised." I widened my eyes and put my hands over my mouth, feigning the aforementioned emotion. "Oh!"

Both parental units looked lovingly at me and burst into laughter, the amused kind grownups reserve for particularly endearing kids. My dad laced his fingers through my mom's and gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder.

"Okay, now try this letter, sweetie," Mom said after a while, still chuckling and sharing knowing looks with Dad. "Eeeeeeeeee."

"_Eeeeeeee_!" my child version squealed, laughing harder, as Mom took a crayon and showed me how. She had gotten periwinkle blue, which I had always loved, although it had more to do with the name I'd always found so wonderful than the color itself.

It was also the color of the one hundred billionth crayon produced by Crayola.

I followed my mother's lead, clutching my own crayon so hard it was destined to break in half, and tried to write my own small E. A straight line. An upward curve to the left. More curving motions before an abrupt stop three-quarters of the way.

Except I didn't stop. Instead of a lowercase E, I had another O with a line through the upper portion.

I had never been so entertained in my short, happy life.

"Honey, you can't do that," my mother patiently said, pointing to her original marking. "It's not supposed to go all the way around."

"Why not, Mommy?"

"Hazel," Dad began, "it just doesn't work that way. It has to stop at some point."

My two-year-old child of a self, who was supposed to be carefree and knowing nothing even remotely negative in what little of the world she had, was livid for a second, and then she was just sad. Slowly, she tried again and produced what looked a little bit more like an E. If it had been crumpled and opened again, that is. She let go of her crayon. Her hand had gone bright red from holding on too tight.

"Maybe sometimes it shouldn't have to stop," she whispered.

I'm remembering this as I sit across from my parents at the hospital fifteen years later. The images and utterances are not so detailed, of course, but I remember nonetheless. Neither Mom nor Dad knows I am right there.

They are about to receive some news.

My mother, bless her heart, is already weeping into my old man's shirt. I am distracted by the fact that this shirt is his favorite, the green polo with the pizza patch sewn on the breast pocket. "You shouldn't have worn that," I say to him, I really do, but he doesn't hear me. Just keeps tangling his hands in Mom's hair and holding back his own tears. "You're not going to be able to look at that after this." I don't want that for him.

"This is it, isn't it?" my mom keeps repeating. "This is really it."

I walk over to sit next to them just as the doctor comes from down the hall, looking defeated and weary. "Mr. and Mrs. Lancaster?" he calls.

My parents stand up immediately. A sliver of hope flickers over both their faces, but I know they know. We have all always known.

Sometimes in movies when characters are about to discuss something previously mentioned or acknowledged to the viewers, they mute the dialogue or have the characters whisper or, like Garry Marshall did for _The Princess Diaries,_ they have one character pull another behind a tree and tell her she's a princess for a fictional European country while being drowned out by road construction. Or something equally strategic, so it's not at all redundant.

As I sit there, I feel like I'm watching a movie and this particular trope applies. Right now, there is no sound. Only a series of images progressing at rapid speed showing two people crying in a hospital. You can read the doctor's lips. He keeps saying, "I'm so sorry."

I guess I'm not princess of Genovia, after all.

My mother collapses onto the linoleum floor. For a second I think my father will follow suit. But he only stands by her, letting her grip the fabric of his slacks as her tears go on free fall. I am transfixed, I don't even blink. Gently, he pulls her up. The sound comes back, and he's telling her to be strong for me, because he's not even strong enough for himself.

At this, I turn away. And then I begin to wait.

* * *

My wake takes place two days later, a Friday, at the Literal Heart of Jesus. It is a bright August day, and I know Mom feels cheated. I take the elevator down with her to get there. It's the only time I've ever ridden, and with Mom a wordless, dazed mess right there, it's even more dejecting than I'd anticipated.

When the elevator doors open, I see Dad already standing next to my casket, and for the first time since I was left with no choice but to part with my physical body and forced to walk the earth completely unseen and unheard, I start to wonder about my current state. I also realize that I've been roaming around without my cannula or a cart trailing behind me, which is probably the most relief I'll have for now amidst all the confusion and sadness. Sometimes I feel peace, and that is enough.

Mom walks ahead of me and I am left alone in the elevator.

I sit there for a long time, asking myself all sorts of questions I can't answer. The wake has begun, so the soundtrack to my meditation is composed of the various voices I'd heard all through my life, talking about me, glorifying me and expressing love for me in a way I could never fathom. Telling all these stories that I simultaneously laugh and cry to. My heart swells, if I still had one. I look at my reflection in the elevator wall, glad I can see myself, and it stares back.

My hair is longer, falling in slight waves a little past my shoulders. This, to me, is a marvel. I am wearing the blue flowery knee-length dress I'd worn in Amsterdam. This, to me, is bliss. This is pre-cancer Hazel, and she looks healthy. Not pale. Not glowing, either, but she's getting there.

Yes, I decide. I still have a heart.

As if on cue, I feel a steady stream of heartbeats through my chest. That's one question answered.

And they say death answers everything. Okay, maybe they don't, but I used to think it did. I don't even remember dying.

Some questions circle my mind more than others. Several people, a lot of them I recognize from Support Group meetings, get on the elevator while I sit in one corner and take my sweet time thinking. Is heaven real? Is this purgatory? Maybe this is hell. Did Augustus attend his own actual funeral? Did he watch as I tucked the cigarettes into his cold, limp hands?

I am not a ghost, am I?

As a test of sorts, when an old lady I think might be my great-aunt exits, I let the elevator doors close. I back up against the wall, then I break into a sprint, as much as one can inside the tiny space. "Yaaaaaa!" I even yell, I got so into it.

And then I hit the doors with a force so great I thought it was _the _Force.

"Oof," I mutter, rubbing my head. The pain shoots quickly through my body upon impact, and is instantly gone. _Minimal pain reception_, I note,_ and I can't walk through walls. Maybe I'm not a ghost, but what?_ I push the button to open the elevator and hope no one notices.

When the doors open, Peter van Houten is standing on the other side. He's walking with a limp, his leg in a cast. Somehow I know this is a result of one too many glasses of brandy. I look at him for a moment as he steps in. He looks exactly the same, cast notwithstanding. Then I walk around him and enter the Literal Heart of Jesus. The service must already be over, as people are either leaving or standing around and talking. The crying is implied.

At the far end of the room stands Kaitlyn, and it surprises me to see her talking to Isaac. But then, I pause to ponder it some more, and I decide it's not very startling at all. This is Kaitlyn we're talking about, after all.

I walk over to them, stepping around a very blotchy-faced Patrick (the Support Group Leader, if you remember) to get there._ Is it still eavesdropping when you're deceased? _

"It truly is a pity, this," Kaitlyn is telling Isaac when I approach. Her British socialite voice betrays her true feelings, which is to say, she is upset, probably even beyond repair. Suddenly I want to hug her, have her talk to me about the newly delectable boys at our high school and Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches or even pore with me over the latest issue of _Cosmo UK _during living room screenings of _Coco Avant Chanel_ and the last film we'd seen together, _The Deep Blue Sea_.

She brought the DVD over, waving it in my face with a packet of white cheddar microwave popcorn, my favorite kind when I didn't feel like throwing up. This had been two weeks ago, and I had become bedridden and weaker than ever. "Not weaker, sweetheart," Kaitlyn corrected me when I told her this. "If I may say so, you're coming out so much sturdier than you think."

Later, when the movie had started, as handsome Mr. Freddie Paige approached Hester Collyer and declared that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, Kaitlyn sighed and clutched my hand. "Dear, dear Lord," she said. "You could just listen to Tom Hiddleston speak forever, don't you think?"

"If I had forever," I mused. "Definitely."

"That man could just recite the series of decimals in pi and it would sound like Pablo Neruda."

I laughed. "His speaking would turn Simlish into a romantic language."

"How does one even learn to talk like that? Must it be a gift on the day of his birth from fairies?"

"All I know is," I said, then I leaned into my seat and swooned.

"Me too, babe, me too," agreed Kaitlyn. She nudged me with her elbow and let me rest my head on her shoulder.

"Kaitlyn?"

"Yes?"

I took a deep breath. It had gotten increasingly difficult to simply inhale. "Thank you for this."

"It's always a yes when it comes to you. You know that, right?"

"I know. Thanks."

"Sure." She raised the volume. "Now it gets good," she said, about the movie. "Now it gets better."

Now she's trying desperately to cover for her tears in front of Isaac, who is still skinny and blond and Isaac. A stifled sob escapes from the confines of her throat, and Isaac frowns deeper. Briefly I wonder if this is their first conversation, or if he'd known Kaitlyn even before he was fully blind. The last time I saw _him_, he'd brought over the latest voice-activated game he just got, which was _Jacks of all Trades_, a _Price of Dawn _spinoff centered on the adventures of Private Jasper Jacks.

That day, as he left, he'd tried his hardest to tell me he would miss me when I'm gone. It was especially hard to keep from crying, because I was going to miss him, too. Still am going to miss him, and still will. And then, for the final time, we heaved a collective sigh, an exhalation that seemed to convey everything, as we used to during Support Group. He gave me a hug, then my dad helped him into his mom's car.

"It is a pity," Isaac answers, shoving his hands into his pockets. "So, Hazel's Friend, how did you meet her?"

Kaitlyn thinks for a moment. "Third grade, back when recess was a grand time. Even then our Hazel was the nicest fighter you were ever to meet. That is, she told off Sally Foghorn for making fun of my snack of tea and petit fours and then, after such a rousing, if terrifying, speech, asked her if she would like to come over and talk about manners while they devour milk and cookies." She smiles through her tears. "And call me Kaitlyn, please."

"Okay, Kaitlyn," says Isaac. So they just met, basically. That's another question answered. He says it again, almost to himself. "Kaitlyn."

I can almost see the word _Monica _being erased from his brain and replaced by a different set of letters. It's one letter longer, but I already know Isaac could make space. And time. Time is more important to Kaitlyn than it is to any other human being on earth.

_Stop_, I scold myself. Now is definitely not the time for best friend matchmaking.

"How did _you _meet Hazel, um…" Kaitlyn trails off. Whoever had put them together, and I assume someone had, since Isaac called Kaitlyn my friend, did not do a very good job of introducing them to one another. "…Hazel's Other Friend?" she finally finishes.

"I'm Isaac." He grins, swatting a lock of hair out of his eyes.

"Right. How did you meet her, Isaac?"

"Support Group."

"Oh."

"Hence the blindness."

"You mean she caused your loss of sight?"

A chuckle. "Oh, yes, Hazel's oxygen tank accidentally hit me in the face so hard I lost my ability to see. You don't see a scar anywhere on me, and I probably wouldn't be able to see it, either, no matter how close I look."

Now Kaitlyn is just playing along. "You poor thing!"

"I told her to watch the damn cannula, but then Augustus Waters was present, so…"

"Well, darn, I don't blame her." Kaitlyn reaches out and takes hold of Isaac's arm, and he stiffens at her touch, but just barely. Then he grins even wider.

The matchmaking seems to be doing itself.

"No, actually, my cancer was in my eye and I had to have surgery so I could recover," Isaac explains.

Kaitlyn nods. "I'm sorry about that."

"Not as sorry as I am that Hazel's gone," he counters.

"As am I."

I start backing away, feeling like I've done enough privacy-encroaching. While I leave, Kaitlyn clears her throat and barely manages to sputter, "Shall we go to my house for lunch and see videos of Hazel and me as terribly chaotic children?" She slaps her hand on her forehead. "Bollocks, I apologize, I completely forgot, you—"

Instead of answering immediately, which I knew he wouldn't, Isaac waves off her accidental insensitivity to his blindness and says, "Did you always have that accent?"

"Why, yes, I did." Dare I say it, is my dear friend _blushing_? Kaitlyn, who once infamously—not to mention airily—proclaimed, "Darling, I never blush"? As Gus would say, this is an interesting turn of events.

"Then I would love to see videos of you and Hazel as terribly chaotic children," Isaac tells her. "But I can't, so maybe I'll just listen." He flashes a smile in her general direction.

He would be good for her, I realize. Kaitlyn has been spending way too much time on boys who aren't worth it. They look at her, but they don't see her. While Isaac could look at her and literally not see her, he can definitely appreciate her true self and treat her the way she deserves, no bullshit. Kaitlyn, in turn, would not be so quick to dismiss Isaac as a grenade. She would know that he is the opposite of one—he constructs, not _de_structs.

They would make each other happy.

Evidently, the smile she returns to him makes her look like the teenage girl she actually is. Tremendously giddy and absolutely head-over-Louboutins.

On impulse, with a rush of love and strange melancholy drifting through me, I run back to them and do a tiny wave. I feel silly, and I wish I could do more than this, but it's okay. "You guys will be fine," I tell them, and I believe it.

Next, I go to my parents.

They are still seated at the front row of the chairs facing my casket, not speaking. Not crying, either. But it fills me with warmth to see that my dad is rubbing comforting circles onto my mom's back. "Do you remember the time we taught her how to write two vowels?"

Mom doesn't waste time trying to figure out the context of this question. "I wish it never had to stop, either," is her reply.

"We love you, Hazel Grace," my dad calls to my casket. "We love you to the end of the world," my mom adds.

I stand in the middle of the rows of seats, right before them. I feel light-headed, but it feels so much better than I have in a while. Right at that moment there's a surge of overprotectiveness in me for my mother and father, who have always kept me safe and happy and who always wanted what was best for me. It's a moment that has me flashing through time, recalling, recalling, recalling all the ways they saved my life. Truly saved me.

This time I'm fearless when I go to my parents and plant kisses on their cheeks and give them the tightest hugs I could muster. They don't even flinch. This post-life, pre-whatever presence of mine is really playing with my brain, but I'm so glad I could touch them, even for the last time, that I don't even think about it.

"There is no end to my love for you," I tell them both, "but now I have to go."

I can already feel myself slipping away, and it sure is strange. I'm not exactly fading, like Marty McFly almost did at the high school dance wherein his mom and pop met when he was so sure for a second that he _so _did time travel wrong, wrong, wrong, but for some reason I know exactly where to go.

When I close the elevator doors behind me, she's right there. "Kaitlyn?" I ask, incredulous. "Oh, my God, have you been able to see me this whole _time_?"

"Relax, crumpet, I'm not Kaitlyn," Kaitlyn replies.

"You look like Kaitlyn, you talk like Kaitlyn." I lean in to take a whiff of her Miss Dior Cherie. "You even smell like freaking Kaitlyn. So, like, don't even _lie_."

She giggles. "Have you ever noted that you talk like a Valley Girl when you are distressed?"

"Says the sixteen-year-old Indiana native with an Oxford accent."

"Don't you dare, people adore my discourse," she warns. Then she gives me a massive squeeze. "Hello, Hazel Grace, I am your Spirit Guide, and I have come to escort you out of the earth."

I scrunch up my nose. "My Spirit _who_?"

She waves her hands in dismissal. "Complete pish-posh, I_ know_. But it's a thing of the afterlife, and we must keep up with trends." She fixes her already immaculate hair and gives me a grin. "Again, I am not actually Kaitlyn. They like us Spirit Guides to take the form of someone you know and trust so you won't feel so overwhelmed."

It is not lost on me that Spirit Guide and Support Group have the same initials. Who knows, maybe this particular SG will bring me another blessing in disguise. For the shortest of seconds I wish my Spirit Guide had taken the form of Augustus Waters. Then I look at Kaitlyn Wannabe and see her gaze at me hopefully. The wish fades away.

I blow some air out with my lower lip, making some of my hair fly up and out of my face. "Can I at least be whelmed?"

Not-Kaitlyn pulls me into the elevator and pushes a button I haven't heretofore noticed. It has an illustration of wings in the style of elevator symbols. She winks at me before the ascent. "Darling dear, you can be anything you like."

I feel like I'm in a Roald Dahl novel as the elevator climbs up steadily and quickly. "Cripes! Where is this thing taking us?"

"We're going to town!" Not-Kaitlyn (NK) yells. The speed accelerates and I hold on to the walls to keep from imagining I'm a damn astronaut. NK, however, seems to be thoroughly enjoying herself.

I am almost at the ceiling when the ride stops. The doors open to the smell of butter and disinfectant. There's a soda-stained carpet with patterns of stars and film reels, and to my left when I step out is a red door with a shiny neon sign above it blaring EXIT.

"Heaven is a movie theater?" I practically gasp.

I don't think I've ever considered everything that's happening to be a dream, but I'm beginning to. Maybe when I wake up I'm hooked up to the BiPAP and my phone would be ringing and it would be Augustus Waters on the other end, he's still alive, and he's saying "Okay," and I'll say "Okay," and we'll keep saying "Okay" until we both fall back to sleep.

NK pinches my arm for me without my asking as if she knows what I'm thinking. "Nope, babe, definitely real life here. Or should I say real _after_life." She snorts, then blinks. "And this is not all there is. Please enter the door to your left."

The room we enter is dark and AC-turned-up-all-the-way cold. As soon as the door closes behind us, a movie starts being projected from the screen. Several empty seats line the whole place. "Take a seat," says NK.

I do as she tells me and become immediately engrossed in the film, which turns out to be my almost seventeen years of life recapped in ninety minutes. It's a weird, exhilarating, slightly haunting experience, and I'm glad I shared it with someone who's almost Kaitlyn.

When the screening is over, a voice much like Morgan Freeman's (I knew it! I _knew _it!) thanks me for existing and welcomes me to this place, wherever it may be. The lights go up, and NK is teary-eyed. "Unfortunately, the 'Guide' in Spirit Guide is only a formality. I must leave to fetch another waiting soul." She turns her lips up in a well-meaning smirk. "Not to worry, I'm fairly certain there will be some friendly blokes who might want to show a pretty young woman like yourself around."

She leans over to give me a quick hug. "My favorite part was when you fell in love," she sniffs.

I give her the biggest smile I can muster. "Mine too," I say.

"Ta." She kisses both my cheeks and turns to walk away.

"Ta," I say after her, already lonely to see her gone.

"Hazel Grace Lancaster," Morgan Freeman booms from above. "You may exit through these doors." And a pair of double doors glows golden amidst the dim theater.

I whistle low. "Fancy."

I take a deep breath, abusing my newfound powers of effortless inhaling and exhaling, then I walk to the doors. I have to shield my eyes from them; they burn so bright. "Here goes nothing," I say to myself, "and here goes everything."

The doors are heavy at first, and suddenly they are light as feathers. They give way to me, and I find myself in the lobby of the movie theater. How completely, utterly anticlimactic.

But then I squint to let my eyes adjust. I blink a few times, dizzy. I am almost shocked to find that it is night-time.

The first thing I see is the moon. The second thing I see takes my breath away all over again.


	3. Three

**Three  
****Augustus**

Caroline Mathers is in my kitchen making French toast when I wake up the next day.

At one point in my life—recently, really—I never would've imagined things such as sliced bread and cereal existing when we die. I mean, Chrissakes, they have Oreo O's here! Oreo O's! It's not logical!

It's just like this novella I read once by this Israeli writer. In it, when people commit suicide, they discover that after death, there is life, the way it's always been, only it's more monotonous and you walk around sporting wounds from the way you killed yourself.

So forget my long monologue about heaven. Here's all that you need to know: It's an alternate universe. Literally. And lucky for us, life here is slightly better than we're used to it being.

Now if that's not Something with a capital S, then I don't know what is.

Then again, even here, everyone views things differently.

I'm trying to wake myself up more as I descend the stairs and run a hand through my hair, making some of it stick up in every which way. Some of it is already up to my eyes, but I can't really say I'm bothered.

"Morning," says Caroline, and I get so startled I nearly jump the whole way back up.

Thankfully I just stumble backwards onto the staircase. "_That's_ one way to wake up," I mutter groggily. "Hey." I raise my hand in a limp wave.

I almost say, _I didn't think yesterday actually happened._

I almost say, _You're not supposed to be here._

I almost say, _I thought you were dead._

I keep my thoughts to myself.

"French toast?" Caroline offers, sliding a plate toward me when I join her at the kitchen table and making her way around the room like she's always been there. I notice she already has a pitcher of cranberry juice ready.

"Thanks." I pick up my fork and push at the bread, still warm and tickling my nose with the scent of cinnamon. I chew a few bites, then I put the fork down and stare at her.

Here's the thing: Not such a long time ago, I couldn't see anything past Caroline and me and me and Caroline. Or maybe Caroline and me and cancer, as unfortunate as that sounds. I loved her. And she loved me. I knew she did, even in the late stages of her goddamned Asshole Tumor. We had a lot of written (and unwritten) history. It wasn't all bad, is what I'm saying.

When she died, I was devastated, even after everything. I resented whatever awful incidents took place when we were together, but, damn it all, how am I supposed to have the heart to resent _her_?

Some days before meeting Hazel Grace I thought about her a lot.

And when it all comes down to it, I can't write her out of my life any more than I can write myself out of hers.

She stares back. "What?"

I shrug like it's obvious. "I know it's interesting having loose security and all, what with our homes being unlocked, but it's still customary to knock, at the very least."

"I'm sorry." Her shoulders droop as she finishes another piece of toast and adds it to the pile she's made. "I guess I just wanted to do something for you, to celebrate. If you want me to leave, I'll go." She starts washing the pan and spatula she's been using.

Immediately I regret my choice of words. "I didn't mean to say it that way. I just…" I rub my eyes. Open them. Can't see past the blur. Rub again. Open once more. There. "I didn't know you can move away. You know, here. I didn't even think you can travel." I walk over to where she is and gently pry the spatula from her hand, turning the water off as I go. "Stay. Please. I can't finish all this." I gesture to the heaping mountain of French toast—she must've made over a dozen—then to a chair across from me at the table.

She nods. "Okay." And I try not to wince.

For a few minutes we both say nothing, just shove forkfuls of salty-sweet bread into our mouths. I watch her over what has now become a perceptibly littler stack of toast and try not to reach out to touch her black hair, which has grown just a few inches past her chin, shorter than she ever wore it, before chemo, anyway. "Your hair," I say at last.

"I have it," she agrees. She studies me. "You've gotten taller."

"I think I was still going to grow."

She smiles sadly, wistfully, at this. "How have you been, Augustus, really?"

"Oh, I'm gr—" I start my default response, but then Caroline is already saying it for me. "You're grand," she deadpans. "You're on a roller coaster that only goes up. I get it." She drops her fork; it clinks with the plate in front of her. "Now tell me something _real_."

"I'm at the sixth installment of _Watchmen_," I say.

This seems to answer her question for now, and she beams again at me, a real one this time.

"How are _you_? What brings you to Mayhemville?"

She squints. "Mayhemville?"

"It's what I call this town." I run my hand along the back of my neck, suddenly embarrassed by this.

But Caroline chuckles, as if she's been expecting it. "Right. Well, I'm having a conversation with someone I've missed," she tells me. "And I'm grateful."

I don't know what to say to this. I don't have to. She's already changing the topic. It's all I can do not to breathe a sigh of relief. "As for Mayhemville…God, Gus, do you really have to ask?"

"First of all," she begins, "yes, you can travel here. You just have to know the right ways. Besides, what do you think the cars and trains and airports and the rest of them are for?"

"Posterity?"

Caroline ignores this, big brown eyes boring holes into her glass of juice. "Second, I came here for you because I wanted to see you. Say hello. That doesn't make me such a bad person, does it?" I don't ask how she found me. I just wait as she takes a long sip of her drink before fixing those eyes on me. "And, Gus, I'm really, truly sorry for—I can't even say it. It was horrible. _I _was horrible."

So she _does _remember.

"You don't have to apologize," I tell her, and at that second I know that I mean it. "It's not your fault. All in the past, huh, Hulk Smash?"

She rolls her eyes and tosses a smirk my way. "Not if you start with that nickname again."

There's another round of silence as we finish off our meal. I'm in the middle of my last bite of French toast when she drops the other shoe I've been waiting for to fall all morning. "So are you ever telling me about the girl you left behind?"

And like a good old cliché, I choke on my food. I nearly knock my cranberry juice over just reaching for it. I take in generous gulps until it's dislodged from my throat. "You know?" I sputter at her when I can speak again.

Why am I not surprised?

"It's not like I had anything better to do than watch life on earth unfold and go on without me at the Cineplex," she mumbles, eyes downcast.

I nod. I don't say I'm sorry. "Was it…?"

"Awful?" She exhales, laughs a humorless laugh. "Not worse than cancer, I'll give you that."

This time, I say it. "I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"Life." I raise my arms in a _What can ya do? _motion.

"Me too. Gus, I have to go."

"Right now?"

"I'll see you later. We can talk then." She pushes her plate away from her and offers me another halfhearted smile. "We have to, you know?"

Yes, I _do_ know. We do.

"Will you be in town for good?" I ask.

Yes or no. Yes or no. Which answer?

"I'm still thinking about it," she replies, after a considerable amount of debating.

No, that's not it.

I actually tell her this. "That's the worst possible answer you can give me right now."

"It's all I have." Caroline gets up and starts toward the sink again. "Take it or leave it."

"Leave it," I say to her.

She turns abruptly back to me, eyebrows raised.

"The dishes," I clarify. "I'll take care of them. Thank you for breakfast."

"Sometimes I really wonder about you, Gus Waters," she says, and just like that she's out the door.

"Wait, Caroline," I say to her.

She turns back around and tilts her head. "Yeah?"

"I wouldn't mind you knocking next time."

Disappointment clouds her delicate features, and I can't help but be reminded of leaves in the fall. "Fine," is all she says.

It is after I've finished cleaning up the mess in the kitchen that I realize I never got to tell her how good I thought the breakfast she made was.

Later that afternoon, just minutes to sundown, I'm walking to Joe's when my shirt gets caught on a bush. "Gus, you _have_ to help me," it pleads. I look down and see that my shirt was actually tugged on by the bush's human arms hanging at its sides.

"_What_—Denny, is that you?"

The bush sprouts a curly-haired head with Denny's face on it. "She's in there!" he practically bursts out.

I look from Joe's to him and back, not speaking.

"Marcy!" he clarifies. "She walked in with her friends a couple minutes ago."

"Are you propositioning me to be your wingman?"

I have to admit, I wouldn't mind being someone's wingman.

"Did wingmen exist in the fifties?"

"Probably." I shrug. I'm already laughing.

He tugs on my shirt again. "Gus, come on, I have no idea how to ask her out, man."

"The first step is more than likely extricating yourself from the bushes."

"Right." Within a few minutes Denny is standing beside me, covered in leaves, small twigs in his curls. "Better?"

"If you're trying to tell her you love nature and being in the forest, then yes. Much better," I say.

We spend a few more moments making Denny look as presentable as possible before we fall in step towards Joe's. My companion is visibly shaking in the ninety-degree heat. I watch him out of the corner of my eye for a while before I can't take it anymore. "Would you relax?" I tell him, nudging him lightly with my shoulder. "You act like this is your first attempt at asking somebody out."

"It is."

"Maybe here, but I'm certain it's the same as it is back there." When you say _back there_ here, people know what you mean.

"No, really, I died an asking-out virgin," Denny insists. "I never even got my first rejection."

"There's hope for you yet."

He shoves me. "Quit it!" Still, I can see he's loosened up and, at the very least, only his fingers are left shaking. "You must have had it _so _easy, didn't you, Augustus?"

"Oh, yeah, my wonderful leg and I got around."

"I'm serious. Even now, I bet. How many girls have you dated since you got here?"

I narrow my eyes at him, bemused. "No one."

I see it on his face immediately—recognition, realization, my whole story written in two words. His voice is low and somber when he speaks again. "What was her name?"

"Hazel Grace Lancaster." I can't help but think I've never enjoyed saying her name more than I do at this moment, even though I can honestly say I'll never lose enthusiasm for it. _Yeah,_ I seem to say._ She's perfect, and she's all mine. _

"Was she amazing?" Denny asks.

"Still is."

"Sorry, man," he tells me, but I'm already shrugging it off. He adds, "That new arrival, though, you seem to know her."

"I was dating her when you and I met," I reply.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

We leave it at that.

When we get to Joe's, the place is nearly deserted except for a tableful of teenage girls in one corner and a pair of old men at the counter. Joe's is a diner opened in the fifties by a man named Joe (naturally), who used to cook for a New Jersey diner when he was alive. He's been serving up home-cooked American goodness ever since. Everybody knows him as Diner Joe now because there are two or three other Joes in Mayhemville, and he carries the name with pride.

As soon as we enter, the bell jingles, and Denny gets behind me, shoving me toward the girls' table. "There she is. Go!"

I elbow him, narrowly hitting him in the ribs. "_You_ go."

The jukebox is playing a jazz song. The girls—there are four of them—are doing little dances and swaying their heads while they sip milkshakes.

Marcy, who is blond and wears her hair all wavy with thick bangs, spots us and waves us over. "Augustus! Denny! Grab a seat!" She and Eliza Beth scoot over, and so do the girls whose backs are to us.

I nearly make a run for it when I recognize a familiar head of straight black hair. But Denny's fast, and he gives me another shove before I can make a move. I attempt to take the seat next to Eliza Beth. Denny has other ideas, however, and pushes me out of the way before I can do it.

Reluctantly, I take a seat next to Caroline.

"You know Caroline, right?" Eliza Beth asks. She's a seventeen-year-old from Minnesota who rolls her eyes any time someone calls her Elizabeth. "Ee-_lie_-zuh," she always insists. "And there's a space before the Beth!"

"She arrived yesterday," Amber, who sits on Caroline's other side, adds.

"I know," I tell them. "We've met. Hi." I don't really look at anyone.

"Hi," Caroline says back. "Peach cobbler?" She thrusts her plate to me. Thankfully, she doesn't seem to be upset about the way I left things this morning.

I shake my head. "I was really thinking of going for coffee. Joe's has good Joe."

Isabelle, the waitress, saunters to our table with her order pad. "What'll it be?"

"I'll have a coffee, two creamers, three sugars." I mime drinking from a cup.

"I want grilled cheese," Denny tells her. He turns to face Marcy, or at least I think that's what he's doing, because he looks like he's about this close to having a heart attack. Poor kid. He tries to speak and fails miserably.

I decide to test my wingman skills. "Marcy, you want anything? Denny's paying."

Denny has a job at the gas station. Sometimes I run errands for Mr. Shapiro at the bookstore when I think I need cash, or when I just want to help. You first get to Mayhemville and when you go to the bank and tell them your name, you have an account, and it's not empty. Like the pre-furnished, pre-built houses, I don't like to overanalyze it.

"You want to split the grilled cheese?" Marcy is smoothing out her polka-dot skirt as she asks Denny. "The serving's always too big, maybe…"

That's a start.

He shoots me a relieved look. "I'd be thrilled," he says, looking Marcy's way again. She promptly exclaims, "Boss!"

"Anything else?" Isabelle wants to know.

"Yeah, maybe your Milkshake of the Day," Denny says.

"We only have that for soup," Isabelle explains. "There's no such thing as Milkshake of the Day."

"Then surprise me."

Isabelle shakes her head with a smile. "Right on. Be with you shortly."

I avoid talking to anyone by pulling _Watchmen #6: The Abyss Gazes Also _out of my back pocket. The action proves unnecessary, though, because just as I start reading a panel, Stravinsky greets our ears.

And once again, I'm up and running just as Isabelle comes with the grilled cheese. "Watch it!" she yells after me, and I call a "Sorry!" as I blast past the door.

I don't even notice Caroline running after me. But she is. She bumps into me as I come to a halt before the Cineplex. I bend over, hands on my knees, panting. "You okay?" she asks.

I nod, still breathing heavily. "I do this every time someone comes," I tell her.

"I know," she replies. "I used to do it, too."

And when she looks toward the lobby, I know she means she was doing it for me.

Today, since it is Diner Joe's turn to change the marquee, it reads _Give 'em a warm Joe's welcome! _There are four people on the list.

I squint to see the marquee, reading the names of the newly dead without much interest.

And then.

There they are. Those three names I've been waiting what feels like forever for. And there _she _is, and she's better than I could ever dream up. The crowd swarms between us, and Caroline is still beside me, but she is all I see. I realize I'm still looking for something, and soon I figure out that it's her oxygen tank, which isn't acting like her shadow for once.

I feel like I might need my own cannula right now.

She's finally here.

* * *

**A/N: **I'd like to thank you all for the awesome reviews! They really helped. I hope this doesn't feel like it was written in patches; I was just on a roll with the writing. I couldn't abandon it, even though I have this huge social science exam to study for. I might edit a few parts or something when I get my full brain back tomorrow, because I feel it's a bit short, but I'm not really sure. For now, I'm quite happy with this. I just wanted to see them back in each other's presences again!

Also, how lame is it that we're not allowed to type the same titles for each chapter? Guess it's back to ol' numbers for me!


	4. Four

**A/N: **Sorry this took me so long! I was really planning an update two weeks ago but a long story involving people who weren't supposed to read this reading it when I left my laptop open and the writer mortification that followed (and stuff with school!) caused me to be very, very late. I truly regret it! Anyway, in response to BritishSocialite, I am _not _planning to end this any time soon. Thank you all so much for the kind reviews, favorites and follows!

By the way, it's amazing to write Hazel and Gus together. Oh, the chemistry! And now, without further ado...

* * *

**Four  
****Hazel**

The hands of Augustus Waters are shaking when he reaches into his pocket for his cigarettes. Briefly I wonder if somehow the pack I slid into his fingers while he lay lifeless in his casket is the same pack he's struggling to hold now. A feeling in my gut tells me so. Even his fingers are trembling as he singles out a stick and balances it between his lips. He takes a deep breath.

And then he's running my way, and he's leaping and screaming into the air and he's grinning wide, so wide, like crazy. He doesn't dodge anyone or anything. He runs straight and with purpose. People are parting to let him through, as if fully aware how much this moment needs to be like the movies, which is only fitting, seeing as we're at a movie theater.

The wind is in his hair. I allow myself the luxury of imagining my hands tangled through it instead.

Just like that, they are.

One second I'm lost in my thoughts, and the next, I'm lost in his arms. The cigarette is lying on the ground, threatening to roll away and get lost under the feet of the still restless crowd. But Augustus is far from bothered. "Okay," he keeps repeating over and over in my ears, his voice as low and smoky as ever. "Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay."

"Augustus?"

"Oka—yeah?"

"Shut up." And for every_ okay _he's uttered, I give him a kiss, trailing them along his jaw. For the _okay _I just cut off, I lean over and meet his lips with mine. He's still trembling as he finds my hands and holds me close.

When we pull apart, I'm surprised to find tears streaming down my cheeks and my hair. For a second I'm confused as I run my fingers over locks of it, but when I step back to get a good look at Gus—_Gus!_—it makes sense.

He's crying, too.

"Hazel Grace," he says, but this time his voice wobbles just slightly and cracks. He holds me at arm's length, taking in every inch of me. I'd say savoring me if it didn't make me blush. He's breathing heavily now, tears still pooling in his eyes and past his lashes. I wonder if part of it's because it hurts to smile that wide.

Still the people continue to gather around us. They are saying so many things all at once. My guess is that having new arrivals here is quite a big deal. But all I can hear are Gus's breaths mixing with mine. His proof of existence and my proof of existence. Now combining into one major evidence that we exist, together, right here, right now.

He looks behind him, as if searching for someone, then he turns back to me. Waiting. Expectant.

All this time I've been thinking of things I want to say when I saw him again. There are too many of them. Do I use the wily charms of my unfailing wit and sarcasm to try to make light of things? Do I tell him I love him? Nah, he knows that already. There are so many words just pooling at my throat, ready to be unleashed unto the world for him! God knows he's said enough _okays _for the both of us. I could probably talk his ears off and he'd need to get a prosthetic pair of those, too.

I could tell him anything and everything. Maybe I should even tell him nothing. Words can make or break moments like these. Sometimes, the moment itself is enough.

In the end, all I can say is: "You have two legs."

This seems to express everything I've wanted to tell him, because he blinks slowly and gives me this incredibly sexy smirk (made even more adorable, of course, by the fact that despite being a Grand Gesture Metaphorically Inclined Augustus trademark, said smirk is partnered with the post-weeping eyes of Surprised and Excited and Innocent Gus; a true juxtaposition that could be potentially fatal for my already unstill heart) before offering his arm. Still quite teary-eyed, he says, "I hope you're not going to run off with the next amputee you lay eyes on. Us two-legged guys, we're a dime a dozen."

"You know I'd buy a dozen of you if I could," I tease, taking his arm. "The world needs however many Augustus Waterses it would be lucky enough to get." We start walking. He leads.

"Too bad. There's only one of me."

I pause. "Even better."

He pauses. "Hazel?"

This time, I don't miss a beat.

"I know. I've missed you, too."

* * *

The sun isn't even halfway up the next day when I start jumping on my bed to wake a still sleeping Gus, who of course insisted he stay the night at my place, which incidentally is right next door to his. Our bedroom windows face each other. He's already made me promise not to moon over him—his words, but probably mine if they weren't—when he's in the middle of changing and deliciously half-naked. I said yes, only if he would do the same for me. A discussion of bedroom window interaction clichés soon followed.

I drop on my knees and nudge him with my hands. "You don't want me to resort to calling you Gussy, do you?"

He covers his face with a pillow and groans. "Mff," he deadpans, voice muffled. "Mfflthn bth ffff."

"_What_?" I grab the pillow and throw it off the bed. I am instantly greeted by his blue eyes, blinking and heavy-lidded, yet still as clear and brilliant as ever.

"Please," he repeats in the same flat tone. "Anything but _that_."

"Augustus, I have a _house_," I tell him.

"Yes, Hazel Grace, I know. We've been over this countless times last night."

I collapse onto the bed next to him. "I just can't _believe_ it!" I turn on my side to face him. "And I can't believe _you_."

"You shouldn't," he says solemnly, tucking a piece of my hair behind my ear. "I'm a pathological liar."

I roll my eyes, and he gives me his goofy grin. "You know what I mean. You're here. I'm here."

"Is that right?"

"I'm afraid so."

He lies flat on his back. His ratty gray shirt has ridden up a little to reveal some of his stomach. It's completely G-tube free, and realizing this makes me reach out to touch it. Also, because I like touching him and I want to.

"Warm," I announce.

He puts his hand over mine. "If the truth is that I'm really here and you're really here, then I think I'm starting to like it. No more compulsive fact-bending for this guy."

The first thing he did last night was lead me to a diner called Joe's. Our walk there was considerably free of other forms of humanity, and this gave me a chance to address some of the pressing issues at hand. Starting with: "So, this is Something, huh?"

I suddenly realized why NK said, "We're going to town!" I thought she was just saying that because that's something people say to mean they're going to have a blast. I never quite got the appeal of that phrase, to be honest.

Gus knew what I meant immediately. "In all its alternate-universal glory," he confirmed.

"So nothing is magical here?" I asked, half-joking. I pretended to slump my shoulders. "Darn."

"_Au contraire_—_everything's_ magical."

"I guess having my luscious hair back is proof enough."

"And my totally cute leg," he agreed. "You look ravishing, by the way. I forgot to tell you that."

"I'd tell you the same, but I wouldn't want you to get any more narcissistic than you already are," which is my way of saying this: _I bet jumping your bones puts the Something in Something_.

He started explaining the basics to me, and told me what he calls Something now (how completely dorky but just like him!), and before I knew it, we were at Joe's.

Keeping his hand on the small of my back, he guided me gently to a table with three girls and a boy. All four of them looked up at us expectantly as soon as we entered. "Hey, Gus, you're back!" the boy said. "Where's—?" He abruptly stopped talking when he laid eyes on me. "Whoa. New girl."

"Your eloquence always was charming, Denny," Gus told him. Then, with a flourish, he waved a grand arm in my direction and said to the table, "Everyone, I'd like to introduce Hazel Grace Lancaster, the—big damn love of my life."

The boy's jaw went slack. I was willing to bet that he knew who I was, by name, at least. I bit my lip, already aware how hot my face feels. Although, once I braved a glance at Augustus, I wasn't quite sure whose cheeks were redder.

He cleared his throat. "Hazel, this is Amber, Eliza Beth and Marcy." Each of them gave me an awkward yet friendly (strange how such a combination of modifiers could actually come to fruition) across-the-table hug.

The boy—Denny—stood up and held his hand out. "And I'm Daniel. I've heard some about you."

"I wish I could say the same, but it's a pleasure to meet you," I told him. "And you all, too," I added to Amber, Marcy and Eliza Beth.

We sat. Gus ordered a soda for me, somehow knowing exactly what I wanted right then. I wasn't hungry, but I was parched. Nobody said anything for a while.

"Wow, Gus, she sure is a total doll," Marcy declared after some time, finally breaking the silence.

"Thank you, Marcy," he replied, but his eyes were on me. Twinkling. "That she absolutely is."

I didn't know what to say to this, so I crossed my eyes at him before turning to Marcy with a small smile.

When my soda arrived, Amber congratulated me on my preference of regular Coke over Diet, which prompted Eliza Beth to ask what my favorite drink is, which in turn began a round-the-table inquisition session that amused Gus to no end. He kept looking at me with the same wide smile he had at the movie theater when I first arrived. I couldn't say I wasn't enjoying it myself.

It was well past eight PM when Gus finally reached for my arm and slapped a bill on the counter to pay for my drink. "Okay, kids, Hazel needs her beauty sleep," he said with a quick salute. "And I've decided it's my job and honor to make sure she gets nice and settled. We'll see you tomorrow."

I waved goodbye to my new friends and trailed after him as we walked away.

"Try not to do anything I wouldn't do!" Denny called after us.

"Only because you haven't done _anything_, Denny!" called Gus back over his shoulder without missing a beat.

"Not cool, Waters, you're supposed to be my _wingman_!"

"He wants Marcy," Gus explained when the diner door closed behind us.

I nodded. "I figured just as much. You can see it in the way he laughed at everything she said earlier. I thought girls were the only ones who did that?"

"_You're_ a girl. _You_ never did that."

"Not the point. We're well past establishing the fact that I am an extraordinary girl."

"That, and the fact that you're a total doll," he added matter-of-factly, not like he was mocking Marcy, but more like he was wholeheartedly agreeing.

I elbowed him lightly. "Does Marcy like Denny back?"

He smirked and drew a line across his lips, as if zipping them shut. "Wingmen never tell."

We were still laughing and joking around when we stopped in front of an apple green house with a milk crate full of books on the front porch. A flag I could recognize from _The Price of Dawn _stood high and proud, waving in the evening breeze.

"You live here?" I couldn't help sounding like a little kid.

But Augustus wasn't even listening to me. He was looking at the house next door, which was robin's egg blue and breathtaking. "Hazel Grace." He squeezed my hand. "You have officially just become the girl next door. Literally."

"_I_ live _there_?!" I sounded about eight a while ago. Now I sound like I'm five.

"I told you. You get a house when you get here. Guess you're stuck with me."

I think I just squealed. No words.

"So…you want to check it out?"

"Do I ever!" I ran up the porch steps and swung the bright red front door open. The walls inside are white, some cream-colored, and there were wonderful photographs and paintings of various places in Amsterdam everywhere. I did a little dance in the foyer. "I have a house I have a house I have a _house_!"

There was laughter, then a knock on the door and Gus standing in the threshold. "May I come in?"

"I don't know," I said, "my mom always forbade me to let you. She always said, 'Watch out for that boy next door.'" I never knew how playing coy could come so naturally to me. Still, in that moment, I missed my mom. I would give anything to have her with me again. Even if it meant actually being forbidden from seeing Boy-Next-Door Augustus.

He tilted his head up to the ceiling with a convincing look of agony. _Why?! _"Oh, be still my heart, all I ever wanted was to get the girl next door to notice me."

Okay, maybe not entirely even if it meant actually being forbidden from seeing Boy-Next-Door Augustus.

I leaned against a wall and crossed my arms over my chest. "This isn't a very interesting storyline, is it?"

"It's safe to say ours is _infinitely_ better." He grinned, taking three quick steps forward and planting a kiss on my forehead.

We explored the whole house, from the spacious living room to the pastel-colored kitchen with a fridge that matches the color of the house to the squeaky-clean bathrooms to the two rooms upstairs. One is a library—I swear, my heart was in my throat, because _I HAVE MY OWN LIBRARY IN MY OWN HOUSE WHAT IS THIS LIFE_—and the other is my bedroom.

I was informing him of my status as a homeowner the whole time.

In my bedroom, I jumped onto the bed. I can't say I was about to miss the BiPAP. "Goodness."

Slumped against the doorway, he watched me. "Goodness, what?"

"Just goodness." I shrugged.

He continued watching me for a moment before squaring his shoulders and righting himself. "Well. Looks like you're settled. I should go." He looked reluctant, but he was already backing away. "You need sleep. It's late."

"You sure you don't want to stay?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I'm sure. Goodnight, Hazel Grace."

"Suit yourself." I followed him back to the front door and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Sweet dreams, my dear Augustus Waters." I closed the door as he trudged down the porch steps.

The only thing left to do was to stand there and wait. I counted the seconds in my head and on my fingers._ Ten, nine, eight…_

Ten seconds later, right on cue, my doorbell was ringing. He was once again on my doorstep. "Forget something?" I quipped.

"I think it's escaped me how utterly unprecedented you are, Hazel Grace, and how hard it is not to be around you all the time. How am I supposed to get some shuteye knowing you're all alone in there?" He stepped forward. "Please let me stay."

"Three words could have done the trick," I told him, "but I'm glad you went the extra mile, anyway." His smile was one of relief and something I could never quite place. "Come here."

I could tell he was gearing up for a spiel regarding a good night's rest on the floor when I patted the person-sized empty space on my mattress. "I'm pretty sure you're quite good with logic. And you have to know it wouldn't be logical or polite of me to let you sleep anywhere other than this enormous bed."

"And it wouldn't be polite of me to—"

"Did I not make you a one-legged non-virgin? It's just a _bed_, Augustus. And I'm just me."

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," he said, before I could go on about not having turned into a zombie, but he had this gleam in his eyes.

I sat cross-legged and didn't reply. With an exaggerated sigh, he made his way over to the bed planted himself next to me. Our knees were touching. "Happy?" he said.

"More than you could possibly imagine," I replied.

Gus's eyes were still gleaming. "I think I can imagine just fine, thanks."

And so we conversed. I told him how life went without him. He told me how it didn't go without me. I talked to him about his parents missing him every day—_everybody_ missing him every day—and attending my funeral. He got into this crazy story of meeting Not-Isaac, his own Spirit Guide. This prompted me to let him know about Isaac and Kaitlyn. The rest of the words poured out between us, covering a range of topics wider than a baseball field. It felt like we could stay up the whole night just talking. It certainly went that way until the need to rest got the better of us.

We fell asleep in each other's arms. I could hear his heart hammering, hammering, hammering away the whole time.

Now he's pulling his pants on over his boxers and giving me a quick peck on the lips. "Be down in ten minutes. I'll make us breakfast."

"Should I be worried?"

He rolls his eyes. "Very funny. I'll have you know I've become quite the cook."

"The kitchen comes pre-stocked, too?" I can't help asking. Very few things are logical here, but somehow they just make sense. You learn to live with them. Just like life.

He smirks, rubbing at his collarbone. "Yeah. But don't go missing grocery shopping just yet. It's a one-time welcome thing. Kind of like a Neopets newbie pack."

"You played Neopets?"

"Shut up. I had a Sketch Chomby _and _a Pea Chia."

I gasp. "Well, nobody likes a braggart!"

"Do you know Kingdom of Loathing, though? I must say, that game was wicked. And hilarious, too. You get to be like Tom Hanks and have blood-faced volleyballs as pets!"

I suddenly remember how endearing he is when he gets excited about something, especially things like pet blood-faced volleyballs. I have a flash of him on the plane during takeoff for our first flight to Amsterdam. I only realize I'm grinning so wide when my cheeks start to hurt.

"What?" Augustus asks.

"Nothing." I shake my head, hugging my blanket to my chest. "Go make breakfast. Prove how good you are at cooking."

He kisses me again, and raises one finger. "I missed doing that. Wait." And it's his turn to kiss along my jaw and below my ear and down my neck and back to my lips again. He's slow and methodical and clumsy and hasty all at the same time. "There. That's better."

I mess up his hair, laughing. "Now that that's out of your system…"

"Right." He ruffles my hair, too. "Food." He jogs out into the hallway and down the stairs, reminding me over his shoulder to get down in ten minutes.

By the time I head downstairs, Gus has managed to prepare a humongous mountain of blueberry pancakes and some macaroni tossed in butter. "No tofurkey yet," he announces. "But I'll grab some for a nice dinner some time, okay?"

"Macaroni and butter?" I furrow my eyebrows together.

"It's good. Trust me." To prove his point, he holds out a spoonful to me. "Come on."

"Just because I'm a vegetarian, it doesn't mean you have to subject me to this—" My eyes widen when he shoves the spoon into my mouth, cutting me off. Whoa, grains and carbohydrates and churned dairy. I consider myself converted. "—absolute perfection!" I finish.

He gives me a triumphant howl. "What have we learned?"

I want to wipe that know-it-all look right off his face.

With maybe a kiss or two.

"You are a good cook. Also, macaroni and cheese is lame and macaroni and butter rules."

He helps himself to a spoonful as well before setting down a plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and taking a seat opposite me. "Thank you. Now, eat up. We've got a whole bright shiny summer day ahead of us!" Mouth half-full of half-chewed macaroni, he nods excessively at me.

"No, thank _you_." The "for being here and for last night and for introducing me to your friends and for sleeping with me and for breakfast oh God breakfast" is implied. I swallow a bite of fluffy blueberry pancake. "Uh-oh. You look like you think you've planned a scheme that Ferris Bueller would be proud of."

This would be NK's cue to say she told me so. Remember her whole spiel about a cute boy (or two, or three, or a dozen) tripping over himself to show little ol' me around? I wanted to believe her, and I think I even kind of did. I just didn't foresee that said cute boy would be _this_ cute boy.

Augustus takes a sip of water. "Hazel Grace, allow me to give you a grand tour of Mayhemville."


	5. Five

**A/N: **Do I have impeccable timing, or what? Okay, maybe that question shouldn't be answered. Sorry I left you all hanging for the past three months! Since I still have two weeks left for my Christmas break, I'll have some time to write and update. Thank you all so, so much for all the reviews (I appreciate all the feedback and I can only hope I can live up to all your gracious words!), favorites and follows. I hope the wait was worth it for this chapter. Happy Holidays, guys! DFTBA.

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**Five****  
Augustus**

I'm sitting in the living room reading the recent horror issue of _Zoetrope: All-Story _when Hazel comes careening down the stairs. She pauses at the bottom step and clears her throat softly to get my attention. "Penny for your thoughts?"

"Don't you think it's funny that people say that, and then when they offer an opinion, they call it their two cents' worth—" I stop short and stand when I look up and see her. She's wearing a sundress in the lightest possible shade of green that immediately brings out her eyes. Her hair is down and parted to the side, slung over one shoulder so that one side of her neck is bare. My fingers ache to touch her exposed collarbone on sight.

"It feels like I'm not supposed to be showing you around Mayhemville," I tell her.

Adorable lines appear along the bridge of her nose as she expresses her confusion. "What?"

I ignore her question and, before I lose my nerve, go ahead with my stupid line. "It feels like I should be showing you _off_ around Mayhemville instead."

"Like a car, you mean?" she retorts, but she's laughing and I'm delighted to see the tiniest hint of a flush creeping into her cheeks.

"Maybe more like a gorgeous Vespa, since you're so gentle on the earth, and all." When we get to her doorway, I kiss her lightly where her neck meets her shoulder and follow up with a quick peck on her lips.

She smiles up at me, then pulls me back down by the collar for another longer, deeper kiss. "You never did that when my hair was so much shorter."

"That's because you never wore sundresses," I tell her, lightly grazing her collarbone with my thumb. "And we were too busy thinking too much to even ponder things like these." I trail my hand up the back of her neck, tangle it through her hair and make my way to her cheek before pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "Most of the time, anyway," I say before meeting her lips with mine one last time.

"For good reason," Hazel Grace argues when she has pulled away. She pushes me lightly out onto her porch and closes the door behind her. "Life needs to be lived!"

"You don't call_ that_ living?"

"I prefer the term _feeling alive_ when it comes to matters related to that."

I grin. "Anyway, if it's not obvious yet, I think you ought to start wearing sundresses more often. You don't even have to offer me a penny for that thought." I hold out my arm and she takes it.

"Thank you," Hazel says. "Now, where to?"

"I guess we'll know when we get there." I start of telling her this and meaning it, but as soon as the words leave me, I know where I want to take her first.

I stumbled upon Lyle's Letters by accident a couple of days after I arrived in Mayhemville. I was taking an aimless walk, getting myself acquainted with the place. On a narrow, almost-deserted street, a storefront caught my eye and I stopped. There, nestled between a drugstore and a vegetarian grocery, was a small shop with dozens of old-fashioned, brightly-painted mailboxes on display in the front window. A red neon sign proclaimed _LETTERS_ at the door. On any other day I might have passed it by without another glance; it seemed to be one of those blink-and-you'll-miss-it best-kept secrets that only people who pay attention know and love. I was almost scared to turn away and look back, only to have it be gone all of a sudden. Magical places like this usually were.

A bell made a soft sound as I pushed the door open and entered.

Inside were more mailboxes and some shelves, all piled high with what seemed to be letters still sealed and unopened, arranged alphabetically by last name. Whether the last names were the senders' or the recipients', I didn't know for sure. It was a lot to take in. I was about to approach the shelf marked "W" when a voice boomed right behind me, startling me.

"Hello!" Heart hammering in my chest, I turned and found myself face-to-face with a man about sixty years old, smiling like he knew me. "Are you looking for a letter you sent or a letter you got?" He chuckled, slapping his wrinkly forehead with an even more wrinkly palm. "Never got, I mean."

"A letter I _never _got?" I repeated.

"I see you're new!" said the man. He reached for my hand and shook it. He had a firm grip. I decided I liked him. "Welcome to Lyle's Letters. I'm the eponymous Lyle. And here in my shop I sell—can you guess?"

"Letters?"

"Letters!" Lyle exclaimed. "All of them never sent!"

I blinked, unbelieving, amazed. "You made a market out of undelivered correspondence?"

"It was more like I was chosen for the job. Even sentiments that never got to be expressed need to go somewhere, right? As soon as these messages go into the trash, poor schmucks who wrote them thinking they'll never be read by other poor schmucks they were addressed to, they automatically become part of inventory. Even letters that were returned or thrown away unopened. I get deliveries every week."

"And then what happens?"

"They wait. We all wait. Eventually, they get read, maybe someone feels something, maybe they don't."

"But why?" I asked.

"Something about the order of life," Lyle said with a shrug. "Or the balance of things. All's well that ends well, and so on. It probably won't matter, but most of the time, it does."

This was all too confusing. "What does?"

"The words! The love! The anger! The hellos and goodbyes and everything in between! The questions and answers, all of it!" He made big gestures with his arms as he spoke. "You go through life never knowing something, but maybe that changes when you read a letter the sender thought you weren't supposed to read. It's just nice to know all the facts sometimes, even if it feels like you wish you didn't know, after all. There's something both beautiful and sad about it, huh?"

"Is this the only store here that offers such a thing?"

"Not at all!" he answered. "Stores like this for unsent letters are everywhere, now that we've bit it! I know there's Clyde's Closure, Mo's Messages, Mandy's Mail…"

Now I was laughing. "Are they all alliterations?"

"Why shouldn't they be?" Lyle laughed with me. "Okay, now that we've had this little chat, what can I do for you?"

I hesitated. "Maybe I shouldn't do anything or have anything done for me right now."

He nodded. "I understand. It's a big step."

"It is," I agreed. "Do you think I have any letters?"

"Everyone does." To prove his point, Lyle shifted away from me, rummaged through a drawer in the "A" section, and came up with a handful of envelopes. He held one out to me. "Look."

I looked. "Lyle, I can't read Greek."

"Aristotle," he explained, dragging a finger across the elegant script. "See? _Every_one. Each shop is the same, has all the letters so people can access them from anywhere." I must have looked incredulous, because he let out a big, booming laugh and joined me in looking around the tiny shop. "I know what you're thinking—how can a small place like this hold billions and billions of letters?"

"Got that right."

"Well, it just does." Yeah, no kidding. "So, you want to see some of your letters? Just see them, mind you, you don't have to read 'em." Lyle tilted his head and raised one gray eyebrow at me. "Like I said, big step. How about it?"

Oh, what the heck. "Yeah, I'll give it a go."

He was already turning to do some digging when he paused and, probably as an afterthought, threw in my direction: "Say, young man, did you tell me what your name is?"

"I didn't. It's Augustus Waters."

"Waters, Waters, Waters…" he muttered, searching quite methodically in the "W" section I'd tried to go to earlier. "Aha! Waters, Augustus." He raised a stack of mail about six inches high bound tightly with a string.

It occurred to me a little late that he reminded me a lot of Mr. Ollivander from _Harry Potter_.

He flung the stack at the desk closest to me. I eyed it warily—even more so when I noticed that the topmost envelope had come from a certain Hazel Grace Lancaster. Was this letter unsent to me before or after I died?

I didn't want to know right then, so I pushed the stack away and straightened up. "I appreciate this, and all, but maybe next time."

Lyle put my letters back where he found them and faced me again with the same knowing smile. "I'll be expecting you, then, Waters, Augustus," he told me with a little bow of his head.

"Thanks." Before I left, I stood at the doorway, holding the door open for myself with one hand. "Hey, Lyle, do _you _get any letters?"

He laughed that laugh of his again. "Weren't you listening? Millions of deliveries a week!"

I grinned. "Well, aren't you popular."

"Millions of deliveries a week," he just repeated, and winked.

If I'm being honest, I haven't been to Lyle's Letters since that day. Now that Hazel Grace is here with me, though, maybe it's time I had another slice of closure. She's walking next to me, taking in the town, pointing out something every now and then. I've shown her around Main Street and a few other must-sees, but we haven't really stopped and stayed somewhere awhile.

"You keep telling me to wait when I want to go immerse myself in a place," Hazel says softly, but I hear the disappointment in her voice. "What am I waiting for, exactly?"

"I just thought I'd show you this one store first before we really check out the rest of town," I say. "It'll be worth it, I promise. Then we'll go get lunch and you can go anywhere you want, okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Okay," and she squeezes my hand. "You know, I'm glad you decided to do this little tour on foot. The day is perfect."

She's right. It is. The sun is half-hiding, peeping with a sly smile behind the clouds and the air is neither too warm nor too cold. It's the type of afternoon you wish all summer days had, the rare kind that you spend doing something special because it just seems to call for it. On days like this, staying indoors is a sin.

I just smile at this, and soon enough, we are turning the corner into that narrow, almost-deserted street. I lead her along and stop at the grocery, just to see how she'll react.

"A grocery store?" She doesn't even try to hide her dismay.

"It's vegetarian," I say, teasing.

"Great."

"Is it really." I mimic her unenthused tone.

"Now we can get that tofurkey you promised for dinner."

I laugh. "Okay, I'm sorry, it's not the vegetarian grocery. Although we _will _buy you some food from there."

"Don't tell me—it's the drugstore. You're going to buy me cough drops. Yippee."

"Somewhere in between," I say, and pull her along. "Literally."

The store is the same. The mailboxes still adorn the window, _LETTERS_ still glows in bright neon, the bell most definitely will still make a nice sound when we open the door and step in.

And she gasps. "Oh, Gus, it's beautiful!"

"I knew you'd love it," I tell her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Come on."

She leaps ahead of me and is inside before I can even take two steps forward. When I go in, she's already talking to Lyle. "A letter I _never_ got?" she's saying, and I bite my lip to hide a smile even though I don't have to.

I stand back and watch, amused, as Lyle and Hazel have a version of the conversation he and I had months ago. When they're finished, Lyle winks at me and says, "Well, if it isn't Waters, Augustus!"

"Hey, Last-name-I-don't-know, Lyle." I raise my hand in a half-wave and put my arm around Hazel Grace. "How are things?"

"Oh, you know, same old, same old," he says, like we see each other regularly and like this isn't the second time I've set foot in his shop. "Millions of deliveries a week," we say at the same time, and he lets out a chortle. "Have you come to see what the past holds?"

I like it, that little subversion of a question often asked about the future, mostly by women in long flowing skirts with scarves tied around their heads, surrounded by tea leaves and crystal balls and tarot cards. I embrace the idea of seeing the bigger picture, something I might have missed, instead of just a vague idea of what's to come. _Once more, with clarity. _

This is probably why I say yes. I'll take the letters today. Not necessarily look at them all—I'm not even sure I'll open one—but at least they'll be with me, where they _really_ belong.

Lyle claps his hands together. "Good! It's decided, then!" As he goes looking for my letters, he says, "And how about you, mademoiselle? Interested?"

Hazel looks up at me and bites her lip, a silent question. "Your choice, Hazel Grace," I tell her, bringing her in closer. "You don't have to right now," I add as I remember what Lyle told me that day. "It's a big step."

"Do you think I've got letters, Augustus?" she asks, and before I could answer, Lyle is back with my things and responding to her question for me.

"'Course you do! Pretty girl like you, no letters, no nothin'? I wouldn't believe it for a second," he announces, as if it were the most basic fact in the world. "I'm willing to bet Waters here unsent you a good chunk of them."

I don't say anything, just take my letters when he hands them over to me. Hazel's eyes grow wide—with recognition, or awe, perhaps—when she sees the one on top, the one with words she'd written that she never imagined she'd see again. Her hand reaches out for it and traces her beautiful, purposeful handwriting. "Maybe I could see what's in my mailbox first?" she says softly to Lyle, gaze lingering on the envelope before she meets his eyes.

"In the meantime, what do I owe you?" I start to take some bills out of my pocket.

Lyle stops me. "It's on me for now. We're not really strict on prices—you just pay as you wish."

"A service like this is priceless," Hazel Grace says. Lyle has taken out her own messages and she turns over the stack in her hands, feeling the weight of it and running her fingers over the edges.

"You sure?" I fumble with the string on mine and run a hand through my hair. "I really wouldn't mind handing over some cash…"

"I'm certain," Lyle reassures me. "You take Miss Hazel Grace out to a good place tonight and have yourselves a great time. That's compensation enough for me."

I nod, smiling. "Thank you, Lyle. This means a lot." I tug on Hazel's hand. "Ready to go?"

She's still looking at her letters like she can't quite figure out what to do with them. "I'm sorry, but I think I'll leave them here for now. I know I can just take them home and it's up to me when I open and read them, but I wouldn't be able to sleep knowing they're waiting for me somewhere in my room. I'd end up letting curiosity get the best of me and I just can't trust myself," she says.

"It's the same way I am when she's in the room," I quip, "I can't seem to leave her alone."

Hazel seems alarmed when she first hears Lyle's trademark big laugh, but I'm used to it. Grown to like it, even. He's wagging his head as he takes her letters and puts them back. "It's okay, Hazel. I'll keep 'em safe for ya, right here."

"Sounds great, Lyle. We'll be back," Hazel Grace replies.

"You ought to; just because you're dead don't mean you won't be getting any more," Lyle says matter-of-factly. "We'll always have things we never got to say to people we think we'll never see again. We carry it with us, thinking it's too late." He shakes his head. "Too late. What a strange concept."

For a second I contemplate asking what he means, but I look at the time and see that the day would be wasting away if I do. Much as I'd like to talk life and death and everything between and beyond them with Lyle, there are still so many things to see and do, and so much of Hazel to share them with.

This time, it's she who asks me if I'm ready to leave. "Absolutely," I tell her, already holding the door open for her. "See you soon, Lyle," I say, and wave. Hazel gives Lyle a wave, as well, and we walk out of the store and back into the day that seems to stretch further and further ahead of us. "I'm sorry that wasn't more than it was," I start to say.

She stops walking and fixes me with those green eyes. "Are you kidding? I loved that you brought me there. I'm so grateful, Gus, I won't even be able to begin explaining it."

"Try," I prod, out of relief and because I have no idea what else to say.

And maybe, just maybe, because I know that she will explain it with someone else's poetry, the way only she can. Smile small, like it's tugging at the corners of her lips but satisfied with the little things, she begins reciting lines I've never heard before. "_And I hear the wind. And so it goes. Some day/We will wake up, having fallen in the night/From a high cliff into the white, precious sky/You will say, 'That is how we lived, you and I.'_" She answers my question before I can even form words from my lips. "John Ashbery. 'The Young Prince and the Young Princess.'"

Here I show my own gratitude by pressing my lips to hers, softly, the slightest of kisses. "If that's the case, then I'm really happy you liked it. It's an amazing place, isn't it?"

"Everything's amazing here," she agrees. "Somehow I doubt it'd be as amazing without you, though." She starts walking again, and I follow. "Lunch?"

"Yes, please. And after, every single thing else."

Laughter, ringing out on the lazy street in this equally lazy afternoon. But I'm buzzing with life, and something more. "One at a time, Waters," she tells me, "one at a time."

I offer Hazel Grace my hand and she takes it in hers, swinging it between us like she can't be bothered to think about anything but now, now, now and now.


End file.
